Emisiones indirectas

Hall (1997a, 1997b), defines representation as the process of attribution of meaning through language, whereby a diversity of idioms operate as ‘representational systems’ and ‘signifying practices’:

It is by our use of things, and what we say, think and feel about them—how we represent them—that we give them a meaning […] In part, we give things meaning by how we represent them—the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualise them, the values we place on them (Hall 1997a: 3, italics original)

68 _{Other interesting works: Berger (2011) on the metal, rock and jazz scenes in Ohio, US, Keil and Feld}

A number of theories in this line of work (Barthes [1957] 2012; Fairclough 1989; Foucault 1980b, [1966] 2005; Lippmann 1997; Said 1985, [1978] 2003) are concerned with the perceptual biases and systematic distortions latent in the languages mobilised by representation, particularly when it comes to the mediated articulation of identity and difference (Siapera 2010: 111-130). Membership to specific social groups is a crucial aspect of that debate, especially when the identities at stake are those of the oppressed sectors of society (Holtzman 2000: 24-28).

Popular music scholarship interested in the representation of collective identities shows a strong appeal to the question of gender and ethnicity. Scholars carry out this agenda by setting to work practically all disciplines and perspectives in this chapter. Note, for example, that studies in gender and ethnicity tend to develop under a common critical attitude towards sociocultural normativity. Likewise, the use of popular songs for putting on the agenda topics sensible to disfavoured sectors of society is consistent with postmodern claims about the inclusiveness of popular music (Storey 2001), as well as with the idea of style as a mode of resistance as subcultural theory has it (Hebdige 1990, [1979] 2002). The pursuit of inclusiveness gathers those formerly or currently excluded from society, e.g. cultural foreigners, discriminated minorities, socio- economically vulnerable sectors, etc. This contributes, according to some scholars, to the democratisation of popular music, which results in inclusive platforms of productive musicians as well as in enlarged audiences (Griffiths 2004; Storey 2001, McRobbie [1994] 2005). Arguing for popular music’s power to blow away social frontiers and allow the inclusion of those marginalised from the cultural panorama seems reasonable within the boundaries of such a theoretical background.

As we have discussed in § 2.3.3, however, the inclusive aspect of popular music is not without complications. Let us recall that it has been object of incisive critique, as well as defended on varying grounds. In any event, what is important is that inclusiveness in music makes room for vindication and contestation via ideological promotion. The latter is approved or rejected by specialists in gender and ethnicity on the same grounds the Marxist cultural critique does, that is, upon the truthfulness of its content.

Along the lines of ideological promotion, and in the wake of postmodern theory, musicologists interested in gender issues have enlarged significantly the list of commentators on popular music since the 1980s (Davies 2011). On the one hand, they have noted the momentum songs provide to the societal ethos they arise from, which does not correspond with things as they are, but with things as hegemonic horizons of thinking have them to be (Adams and Fuller 2006; Harker 1980; Stephens 2005). This calls for reflection on their impact over youngsters and children education (Sternheimer 2003; cf. Attali 1977: 218-220). That sort of ideological support, the argument goes, tendentiously results in biased representations of gender. On the other hand, notwithstanding that, gendered scholarship has assumed positive stances towards popular music, particularly as regards lyrics, without losing sight of the criticisms above (Whiteley 2000; Bowers 2000). In this connection, some authors (Ellis 2008: 196-200, 235-243; Wald 1998) set out to examine lyrics in combination with performance, visual images, and music vis-à-vis the appropriation of signifiers such as ‘girl’ or ‘bitch’ as a mode of resistance, pointing also to the use of irony as a discursive enhancer and to the immanent contradictions of such an strategy. Other approaches have gone on to explore the representation of feminine identities outside the confines of lyrical content, down to

musical form, a trend for which the work of Susan McClary has been instrumental. For present purposes, it is convenient to highlight her articulation of homology in music, as a ‘public forum within which various models of gender organisation (along with many other aspects of social life) are asserted, adopted, contested, and negotiated’ (McClary 2002: 8; cf. 1994). Importantly, the author claims in co-authorship with Walser (1990) that bearing such principle in mind is imperative for the adequate study of popular music—as Adorno, in their opinion, made clear already in the 1930s. Also in a non- lyrical vein, yet beyond representations of femininity in music, McRobbie has conducted research on the rave culture and the peculiar involvement of girls with it, from an overarching perspective that understands music as practice69_{. Based on it, the author} has conducted research on club dancing as a socio-musical practice—a theoretical gesture that reminds of the works of Thornton (1996) and Cressey ([1932] 2008) in that not music itself, but what happens around it, becomes the centre of the discussion.

The approaches to gender issues in popular music studies are not limited to women’s studies. A significant body of literature along the lines of men’s studies and queer theory has been growing since the 1990s. The latter has rendered key contributions to the theorisation of popular music through the same research lines hitherto discussed in this section. That is, scholars in this subfield work on the representation of identity in lyrical formulations, on musical and non-musical performances, on formal musical aspects and on socio-musical practices (e.g., in queer musicology: Wood 2006; see also Amico 2001; Dickinson 2001; Loza 2001; Maus 2001; Mazullo 2001; in men and masculinity studies: Jarman-Ivens 2013; Duffett 2001) 70

69 _{‘As practice’ refers here to Couldry’s conception of ‘media as practice’ (2004, 2009).}

70 _{All sources from 2001 referenced here are available in Popular Music 20.3 (Gender and Sexuality special}

The picture of gendered popular music studies is rather manifold, to be sure. I suggest making sense of such diversity as the scholars’ recognition of varying modes in which music may relate to the matter, far from any essentialist attribution of ideological valence to popular music in general. In this connection, Koskoff’s (2005) fourfold categorisation of musical performance vis-à-vis inter-gender relations may be useful. The idea of cultural products that maintain, appear to maintain, protest and challenge the social order is a rather plausible characterisation of the spectrum of possible relations between popular music at large and dominant gender ideologies.

This same trend of critical scholarship embraces discussions on ethnicity as regards representation and identity. In this vein, it is important to highlight a salient difference between this research line and more traditional approaches, as those illustrated by the Marxist cultural critique: whereas the latter focus on matters related to oppressed majorities (the working class), the ethnicity approach tends to concentrate in minority issues. Interestingly, ethnicity and gender mingle in critical examinations of popular music. For instance, the works of Bowers, Ellis, Finley, Harker, Stephens, and Wald, cited above in relation to the socio-musical role of women in popular culture, do tackle questions of ethnicity too. Moreover, the two aspects mingle under the heading ‘social injustice’, for whose ideological eradication popular music has been found pedagogically effective (Brkich 2012)—as some Marxists scholars have. It is important to underline the observation that not only the content conveyed by popular music texts, but even the language put into use when it comes to lyrics, becomes relevant in the process of articulating cultural/ethnic identities. Language choice may become a strategy played on the level of meaning and cultural heritage (Berger and Carroll 2003; Cutler 2000; Hyder

2004). Therefore, language choice, and the proficiency required to understand the lyrical content of songs, plays a key role in this mode of extra-musical association.

2.4 Concluding Remarks

Some consistencies in the development of the field are worth special attention. In order to form a general idea of such connections (with a view to the purpose of this dissertation), I invite the reader to consider these concluding remarks with the aid of the Appendix as ancillary material (synoptic tables).

This exposition has revealed a tendency to make sense of social structure and symbolic production in binary terms. A key feature of modern aesthetics, this mode of conceiving cultural practices has displayed varying nuances in the history of ideas. Consider, for example, the kind of vertical hierarchy proper to the 18th _{and 19}th _century in Europe, expressed in the binomials fine/mechanical (Batteux), liberal/mechanical (Diderot), art/craft (Kant), bourgeoisie/proletariat (Marx), and elite/mass (Arnold). This trope is at the heart of landmark developments in popular music after the 20th century under the form of art/commerce (Mellers), ruling-class/working-class (Harker), art/trash (Goodwin) and serious/popular (Covach). Other takes on the matter opt for a systemic organisation of cultural production and consumption. Here, the system in question can be a field structured by the art/mass polarity and determined by accumulations of capital (Bourdieu), a confrontational space for the advancement and contestation of conventional/unconventional systems of rationalization (Cressey), hip/squared attitudes (Becker), or dominant/subordinate segments of society (Hebdige). Others submit a hybrid organisation of cultural production, where radically horizontal schemes opposed to the binary logic of modernity coexist with all binomials

above (postmodern theory). Popular music is analysed and criticised from the perspective of such structural models (of which ‘authenticity’ is an ideological result).

The modernist either/or mode of organising cultural practices and products manifests itself in practically all popular music theories discussed in this chapter, remarkably so when it comes to the evaluation of popular music's worth. The songs' rapport with real life is the key to such an assessment. This evaluative principle, in the different shapes it takes depending on the theoretical background, is what I have conceptualised as authenticity in popular music. Radical antagonists to the popular culture argue that such a connection is weak, because, in their view, a serious lack of correspondence between songs and social/cultural/experiential reality pervades most popular tunes. For that reason, they sorely question the value of popular music. The classic notion of mimesis comes back in this style of cultural criticism, with idealisation playing a detrimental role. In this connection, a sort of social realism regarding content seems to dominate scholarly appreciations of the popular song. Other trends, however, see benefits in the use of popular music as the vehicle for ideological promotion to the service of social justice and freedom. In this line of work, the relation between music and society is central. For others, authenticity relates to the problem of originality and the figure of the Genius in a globalised context. Here, postmodern notions pro and contra creativity play a key role, in terms of the need for ‘authors’ in the modernist sense.

Commoditisation, as inherited from seminal debates on political economy in the 19th _{century, is a very influential concept that shapes several approaches to popular} music as well. The commercial character of music, its profit-seeking nature, its professional machinery of production, and its importance as the raison d’être of a multimillionaire industry, serve as grounds for definitional gestures regarding what

popular music is. Marxism displays a very powerful influence over such arguments, directly or indirectly. More than any other parameter, the commodity character of popular music has furnished the arguments of scholars and musicians in efforts to lay down the boundaries that separate the popular repertoire from others, not without incurring in poignant value judgements. Such provisional definitions include what we may call the internal divisions of popular music (pop versus rap, rock, country, etc.) and its external distinctions against classical and folk. How those divisions and distinctions work in theory and practice, and the extent to which the arguments at play are good enough, is the subject matter of the next chapter.

The mind map at the end of this section is useful to trace the family resemblance of the theories addressed above. It also helps understand how their tropes feed into the theoretical discussion that follows. Using colour coding, I have identified the lines of research that begin (in this narrative) with the Modern System of the Fine Arts (§ 2.1.1), Historical Materialism (§ 2.1.2) and Early Cultural Anthropology (§ 2.1.3). For the purpose of this schematisation, I am attributing a dominant trope to each tradition, as shown below. I have simplified the headings for readability:

 Modern Aesthetics YELLOW Structural order of the musical field

 Historical Materialism RED Material order of the musical field

These tropes tend to intersect in the different camps of popular music studies. That is not surprising, because they are aspects of the same ‘order of things’ as Foucault would put it (§ 1.2). The distinction I suggest is merely analytical. In the roadmap, I indicate the strongest links via line connectors (methodological or theoretical continuities) and moderate influences by combinations of colour. The yellow trend shapes the theoretical confrontation of the popular with poetry and art music (§§ 3.1.1 and 3.1.2) while the blue one does the same regarding lyrical and musical lore (§§ 3.2.1 and 3.2.2). Finally, the red trend informs the discussion about the relations between commoditisation, art and folk (§§ 3.1.3 and 3.2.3).

The same trains of thought join mediatisation theory in Chapter 4, in order to account for (1) the structural constitution of new spaces of musical interaction, (2) the technological factors that determine the rise of global music (red) and (3) the semantic repercussions of such phenomena for all participants in the musical field.

Part Two:

Recasting Popular Music